News Roundup: August 13 - September 22

The two big guns in Windows or Linux on Mac virtualisation released their yearly upgrades in the previous month. Parallels Desktop 9 includes support for Thunderbolt and FireWire devices, OS X’s PowerNap feature, the Mountain Lion Dictionary gesture, Windows 8.1, and more, all while boasting 40% better disk performance, 25% faster shutdowns, 20% faster suspending, and 3D graphics that’s 15% faster than in Parallels 8. You can buy/trial it and learn more at Parallels’ Desktop product site.

VMware Fusion 6, meanwhile, adds Dictation in Windows; support for up to 16 vCPUs, 8TB disks, and 64GB of RAM; a new user interface; improved Boot Camp support; multiple display support (in OS X Mavericks); Windows 8.1 support; and the usual host of performance improvements and minor feature additions. You can check out all its new features, and try it out, by visiting the VMware Fusion product page.

Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin version 4.0 came out today. It’s the first stable release in nine months, bringing 2500 changes from Dolphin 3.5 — including a new look (and swanky new icon), beta support for the Wii official online multiplayer, Wii Balance Board and Gamecube Steering Wheel support, new audio emulation code, Fastmem support on OS X, an OpenGL video backend rewrite, and much more. You can get it from the Dolphin download page, while the announcement post is here.

After a long period (three years) without an official release, Sony PlayStation emulator PCSX-Reloaded has been updated to version 1.9.93 beta. People who’ve been using SpeedofMac/ConsoleEmu’s unofficial builds won’t notice much of a difference, but it’s a huge improvement over 1.9.92. See the release notes here for details.

Continue reading for additional updates, including new versions of Mednafen, Q-emuLator, zxsp, PPSSPP, and more.

Multi-system emulator Mednafen has been updated to version 0.9.32-WIP. This release fixes a compatibility regression with some PlayStation 1 games and reworks GPU interlacing and double-height-mode emulation. Mednafen’s corresponding frontend, NekoLauncher Mednafen, has also been updated. Get them both together from the Mednafen forums, or head over to Nekocan for just the frontend.

Shareware Sinclair QL emulator Q-emuLator has been updated for the first time in a year and a half. Version 1.2 introduces a trial mode for unregistered users and improves compatibility. See the version history here, and the download information here.

OpenMSX Launcher, a frontend for openMSX, has been updated to version 1.1. Additions include the ability to bring up the Finder or move games between databases via the right-click context menu; a bar that shows company, year, and file size for the selected game; and drag and drop on the edit screens. Head over to the MSX Launchers site for more details.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator zxsp has been updated to version 0.8.0pre18. This adds support for the +3 floppy disc drive. Check out the development blog for more details, then grab the download from the zxsp for Mac OS site.

PlayStation Portable emulator PPSSPP still doesn’t officially support Mac, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the latest release. Version 0.9.0 improved control mapping and latency, performance, and frameskipping, while also introducing a redesigned user interface. And version 0.9.1 fixed a couple of serious bugs. You can learn more about the emulator at its website, and download an unofficial Mac binary here (requires SDL).

JPCSP, a Java-based PSP emulator, continues to receive automatic daily builds. You can download these, and see the revision logs, on the JPCSP EmuNewz download page. And you can learn more about the emulator at the JPCSP website.

MAME’s sister project MESS, a multiple system emulator, has also been updated to version 0.150. You can learn more about MESS at its official site, while SDLMESS is available here.

QMC2, a frontend for both MAME and MESS (which supports their SDL variants), has been updated to version 0.40. This adds support for several image file formats (before it was only PNG) and improves performance. Get it from the QMC2 downloads page.

XRoar, a Dragon and Tandy Color Computer (aka CoCo) emulator, is now at version 0.30.2. This minor update fixes a few bugs, while the prior 0.30 update added CoCo printing support, expanded menus, and support for the Orchestra 90-CC cartridge, along with a new pointer-based virtual joystick and a number of other features. See the changelog for full details. You can learn more about the emulator at its official site.

Atari 2600 VCS emulator Stella has been updated to version 3.9.2. This release focuses mostly on the debugger, as did the 3.9.1 update that came 10 days before it. Head over to the Stella news page for release notes.

As we wait with baited breath for the next major update to VirtualBox, it has yet another maintenance release ready for download. Version 4.2.18 fixes a number of issues, including live snapshots and teleportation not working and some issue with mouse wheel scroll events in seamless mode. Check out the changelog for the full list.